


The House in the Forest

by TourmalineGreen



Category: Winternight Series - Katherine Arden
Genre: F/M, I apologize for nothing, pure and shameless filth, pure filth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-26
Updated: 2019-06-26
Packaged: 2020-05-20 01:55:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19367791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TourmalineGreen/pseuds/TourmalineGreen
Summary: For those with eyes to see it, the little copse of pine trees clustered near the edge of the wide, glassy lake sometimes shifts, sometimes changes, sometimes isn’t trees at all.(a short drabble, for everyone who loved Morozko and Vasya.)





	The House in the Forest

For those with eyes to see it, the little copse of pine trees clustered near the edge of the wide, glassy lake sometimes shifts, sometimes changes, sometimes isn’t trees at all. 

For those who somehow might stumble into the space where the forest isn’t quite a forest, they might see a little house, rough-timbered and cozy, with warmth in the windows that might just be sunlight, streaming through the gently-waving boughs. They might see the curl of smoke rising from a chimney, or perhaps only a flock of birds, rising and lifting into the winter-deep air. 

Perhaps it’s only trees. 

They might see it, those brave or lost travelers, and turn away. Shake their heads and wonder, recall it only as a dream or half-imagined memory. 

Trees, after all, cannot be houses. 

And winter is cold and cruel and unforgiving to those who stumble into his realm—everyone agrees, it’s best to tread warily, carefully, respectfully near his domain. 

Especially when he’s otherwise occupied, face buried between the thighs of the witch he loves more than life itself. 

* * *

_ “Again?” _ Vasya says, breathless, legs still trembling. 

Between them, Morozko looks up at her, dark hair falling across his brow, sticking to the faint sheen of sweat there. His ice-eyes are bright and, for all that he doesn’t exactly flush, his expression says it all. That, and the swipe of moisture that coats him from cheek to chin. Her moisture—and his. 

Winter is thorough, and dedicated, and single-minded. His cool hands slide up her bare thighs, thumbs stroking at the crease where leg meets hip; his touch makes her shiver, for more reasons that one. 

“Can you?” he asks her, love evident in a voice that feels like the rumble of a distant snowstorm. “I think you can.”

“You have such faith in me,” she says; while her voice is tinged with the faintest of complaints, he can hear the smile behind it. 

He knows her so well. 

“You know that I do.”

Any reply she might have composed is lost to the sound of her pleasure, low noises, then rising, like wind in the trees. If he heals her wounds with water, then it’s water she returns to him—her own sweet liquid, which he laps and tastes and revels in, until she crests once more, like a sheet of ice breaking free and slipping down into a churning ocean. With him, it’s always freedom, never fear. That is what she loves best, she thinks—that feeling of free-fall, the calm and the storm and what comes after. When his hands touch her, gentle her back down. 

She cannot lie, however, and say she doesn’t adore it when she can do the same for him. 

He is no man, but he is formed as one. All of the proper limbs and frame and parts which Vasya has spent long lazy nights caressing and cataloging. His skin is pale, smooth but not unblemished; he wears his age well. 

He lets her flip him to his back, lets her crawl over him, her skin blazing hot to his ice-bright coolness. He will not melt beneath her, but his face heats up, flushing at her perusal of his hardness. Vasya takes that part of him in her hands, and he groans—a most undignified sound for the Lord of Winter, a sound that warms her heart and fills her down to the marrow with such tender desire for him. 

Under his watchful and loving gaze, Vasya lowers her parted lips to the wet, sensitive crown, and swipes across the taste of him there. It’s only fair, only equitable, that she ought to bring him to the peak of delirious torment, since he’s done the same for her. 

In his other form, black-shrouded, cold and quiet, he hears the begging of the loved ones when he shepherds their souls to the next place. It’s only here, in this place, that he is the one who falls to begging, soft whimpers falling from his lips as she applies her mouth with gentle suction, then words, then the press of his hands along her cheek and jawline—delicate, so delicate, not pushing or prodding, simply caressing there, always with the look of utter disbelief, of deep-flowing joy, of bewilderment that she might do such a thing to him. 

Her quiet man, her lord, he’s loud when he comes for her. Shouting his climax in long, shuddering breaths, startling a small flock of snowbirds into the air. 

Outside, a pine bough shudders, and snow falls to the ground. 

Inside, Vasya licks her lips. He is briny and sweet and strange. He is cold, so cold, but she likes it. She has no qualms about taking him—all of him—inside of herself. 

“Witch,” he says, reverent and with the same tone as a man might say ‘Beloved.’ 

Winter is deep, and eternal; Vasya surrenders to his hands as he pulls her close, feels his hardness still pressing against her thigh, and sighs with contentment. 

She thinks about the gold and the gems and the jewels. The basket of snowdrops, the feeling of her frostbitten fingertips. All of the things he had brought to her, offered her, and, at times, used to bribe her. The nearness of merciful death and the longing for freedom, a longing so fierce that no words can encompass it, no sound or song express it. As she takes him in, she thinks about lying half-dead in the snow and still aching to fight, to live, to go on. She thinks of all of these things, sees them reflected back in those ice-white eyes, and knows that he has been her companion all this time. 

A man, a mortal one, might take issue with this arrangement. And while she cannot ignore all the other times, and the other poses they’ve enjoyed, Morozko is certainly not complaining to be beneath her.

There’s an intimacy between them; sometimes it’s unbearable, and so profound. With his body filling hers, with his hands steadying hers, with the taste of him on her tongue she sinks down and lets him in. Between them, magic sparks in the air, little snowflakes, falling down to kiss his skin, and hers. 

That time between them, in the predbannik, he had taken her willingly, hard and fierce, slamming in, his body singing with  _ alive, alive, alive. _ Now, though, when the frenzy of the battle was a distant memory, they could slip slowly into shared pleasure. Astride him, Vasya dips her fingers down the hollow of his throat, across the lean and corded muscles and tendons, chases the way he swallows with her thumb, and then puts her hands on his sturdy chest. 

Morozko moans, and his hands fly to her waist. Needy, urgent. His touch urges her like a snowstorm on the wind. He bucks underneath her, urging her to ride him in truth.

“Again?” she whispers, her smile soft and wry as she watches his already-wrecked face, watches as his mouth goes slack, his eyes go glassy. “I think you can…”

“Don’t tease me, witch,” comes his guttural, besotted reply. 

So she rides him. 

What would anyone say, looking in on this scene: Two bodies, bare and lovely and unburdened, riding together, wild in the quiet forest. There is no one watching, no wandering woodcutter, no lost farmer, no animals nesting in the trees. But for those with ears to hear, straying close to this forest-place, they might hear his voice on the wind. 

_ “Vasya, Vasya…” _

This is the way their joining comes: Slowly, then all in one joyous rush. A surprise, each time, and a glorious explosion of light and peace and pleasure. He is sweet, so sweet, when he shakes apart beneath her. The things he says for her— _ yes _ and  _ good  _ and  _ mine, my only, my sweet witch.  _ Then her thighs tremble, and then she, too, is lost to him. Lost, and found. Spilling her own slick-wet triumph atop his sturdy thighs, wet on the place where she grinds, coming hard for her winter lord, the keeper of her heart. The one who guides her gently, the one who leads her home. 


End file.
